A Washington initiative to label genetically modified foods could reverberate in Oregon, where activists hope for their own labeling initiative to be on the 2014 ballot.

“Both sides believe that what happens in Washington state will have an enormous impact on whatever the next road is in this struggle,” says Charles Benbrook, a Washington State University professor specializing in sustainable agriculture who has long studied the issue of genetically modified organisms – or GMOs – in food.

If the food industry loses in Washington, Benbrook says, it will be under heightened pressure to agree to national labeling standards to avoid state-by-state rules. Critics of genetically modified food also hope a victory – which could make Washington the first state to implement GMO labeling – would push the industry away from these crops and provide momentum for efforts in Oregon and other states.